From the abundant writing on Christmas - historical, literary, popular, mythical - comes this eclectic anthology which includes familiar pieces by Betjeman, Auden, Hardy and Dickens, as well as more obscure extracts. The selection ranges from Milton's "On the Morning of Christ's Nativity" to Wendy Cope's rueful "A Christmas Poem", and from accounts of Christmas Day at the North Pole, and in the trenches in 1914, to Christmas as celebrated by the England cricket team in Australia.